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What’s Up, Self-Improvement Dorks?
I am one of you
I’m a self-improvement junky. I’ve been through the wringer of motivational YouTube videos, books, and seminars. I’ve paid for events where I walked on hot coals while chanting “YES!”, I have paid for weekly accountability check-ins with performance coaches and I have spent thousands in the process.
And I’ve had an epiphany about it all.
And it’s this:
Self-improvement is really good at explaining what you might be doing wrong. But it’s terrible at telling you how to fix it.
I’ve been listening to a self-help book called The Mountain Is You on Spotify.
It’s alright.
It’s doing a good job of explaining how self-sabotage is just us trying to meet our needs. It’s been someone what revelatory in that sense. However, the prescriptive sections on how to deal with self-sabotage are weak.
Sorry to be rude. They’re terrible.
Essentially the advice at the end of every chapter is “Don’t do that.”
It’s no better than the rubbish pseudo-stoicism that’s touted around these days in Instagram memes (side note: I dislike Stoicism, as it mostly treats humans like programmable robots where you can just flip a worry switch on or off).
